XL8 Elevates Aerosmith Tour

Aerosmith's FOH Jim Ebdon with the Midas XL8.The Midas XL8 Live Performance System has completed the final leg of Aerosmith's 2007 world tour, with FOH engineer Jim Ebdon at the controls as the Boston rock legends made their way across North America. Earlier this summer, Aerosmith embarked on the "World Tour 2007 - The Tour Heard 'Round The World", bringing their signature brand of rock 'n' roll to fans across the globe.

Along with Ebdon at FOH, Chuck Wells acted as assistant FOH engineer besides handling systems technician duties. When the console joined the tour, "The lid came off to 'oohs and ah's' from the few of us standing by," recaps Ebdon. "It looked beautiful, and was smaller than I remembered, which was a good thing. I started to program the console and very quickly found my way around setting it up, patching input channels, routing, effects, sends and returns, and outputs. I had the crew band play for me, which is how we sound check, and within a few minutes I was confident with the console and had them sounding very good. I had very good results from the first show, and gained even better familiarity with it for the rest of the tour."

Ebdon and the XL8 saw plenty of live action and racked up the miles as they took the tour's homecoming stretch of the North American tour up to Toronto. "I've been a user of digital consoles since they were first introduced to the market and have really tried them all," continues Ebdon. "However the XL8's audio quality is above and beyond anything I've heard in the digital realm. It has that warm Midas analogue sound, both the pre's and EQ's are what you'd expect from Midas. Plus, you've got the VCAs (variable controlled associations) and POP (population) groups, which allow you to quickly grab any channel assigned for easy control.